Understanding External Awards

In most instances, external awards are already determined for a student by an external entity. However, information about a student's external award must be accounted for and posted to a student's award package to determine the effect on a student's total financial aid package and financial need.

External award or resource data can originate from various sources:

• State agencies providing data on state grant awards.

• Internal academic departments providing data on departmental scholarship awards.

• Students directly providing information about outside or private scholarship and grant awards.

• Student financial department providing payment transactions that have already been acknowledged on a student's (SF) account, such as waivers or third-party contract payments.

External award or resource data can be communicated to the financial aid office in various formats and methods:

• Data files, such as state grant roster files or internal departmental scholarship files.

• Manual data entry required when a student submits paper financial aid notifications that indicate outside or private scholarship awards.

• Entries from students who enter outside or private scholarships and grants in Self Service.

• Data included in other nonfinancial aid specific records, such as waiver and third-party contract payments already posted to a student's (SF) account.

• School Loan Certification Requests, which differ from all other external awards. The borrower applies for a loan directly with the servicer and the servicer requests that the school certify the borrower's eligibility.

External award data processing is built around a core set of External Award Staging records that maintain the external award transaction data. Every external award transaction entered is keyed with a set of transaction key values and provided a processing status as it relates to the loading of that transaction into the student award records.

The following diagram shows a high-level flow of data.

Image: Data flow of external awards to student award tables

Data flow of external awards to student award tables

Various data sources update the core set of External Award staging tables. After external award data or transactions update the staging tables, a separate External Award Load process is run to determine whether and how the external award data is to update the student award tables. The result of the External Award Load process updates the processing status field maintained for each external award transaction.

The Student Financial and Financial Aid teams need to determine which payments to represent on a student's award package. Then use the External Award process to acknowledge payments, waivers, and third-party credits that have already been posted to a student account. Payments posted to a student account can be defined as a one-to-one mapping to a (Financial Aid) item type or a many-to-one relationship.

To set up the mapping, complete the external award attribute setup. Then update the External Award tab on the (Student Financial) Item Type setup table. Run a separate SF External Award process to capture and assess mapped payments and credits to a financial aid item type. The SF External Award process creates external award transactions in the External Award Staging tables.

The outcome of the External Award process updates award data in a student award package. A school loan certification request can become a candidate for a type of external award. The External Award process has options to identify the potential awarding of a loan certification request. School loan certifications are the only type of external award that is evaluated for federal need eligibility, based on the type of loan certification request.

Federal Stafford loan certification uses the Related Item Type setup to identify the subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford financial aid item types. The Stafford Loan Certification Awarding process evaluates the student's current federal need and posts the appropriate subsidized and unsubsidized award combination. If the student does not demonstrate need, the process returns an error message that the student is not eligible.

Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students (PLUS) and Alternative school loan certification requests require a single financial aid item type.